Business Coaching

Levi's "Go Forth" campaign: is it really helping Braddock, PA?

Recently Levi’s opened a new ad campaign featuring the town and citizens of Braddock, Pennsylvania, but is this campaign effective corporate propaganda or corporate philanthropy at its best?

The company’s “Go Forth” campaign is employing the slogan, “We Are All Workers”, as it shows interviews with citizens of Braddock talking about better times as melancholy piano music plays in the background.

Braddock was once a thriving suburb of Pittsburgh with over 20,000 citizens at its peak in the 1950s. A steel mill created jobs for workers, stores were busy, people had money to spend and times were good.

Following the closing of the UPMC Braddock Hospital, the area’s biggest employer in recent years, today only 3,000 people live in Braddock. The site of Andrew Carnegie’s steel mill, Braddock is now just an afterthought in today post-modern American economy, as are many once-thriving small American towns.

It seems that Levi’s understands this and is taking action to help Braddock. Over the next two years they will give Braddock a million dollars to help improve Braddock’s Community Center, Public Library and Urban Farm. Citizens will also be featured in Levi’s ads.

But does the campaign go far enough? After all, when you say “We Are All Workers” for ads featuring American workers and then manufacture less than 3% of your product in America, are you being genuine or are you just trying to exploit a bad situation for your benefit?

Levi’s has brought attention to Braddock, but it hasn’t brought jobs. There are no plans for Levi’s to open a plant in Braddock. Instead Levi’s own site says this about the campaign, “…if they’re just matched with the right distressed consumer brand, distressed Americans are ideal marketing mascots.”

Is that what working Americans have become, marketing mascots? What do you think of Levi’s marketing campaign and how it can affect Braddock, Pennsylvania?

Steven Slater, the now famous, ex-Jet Blue steward.

By now we’ve all heard of Steven Slater. For those of you who might have been out of the country or in a coma last week, Slater was the excitable Jet Blue flight attendant who flipped out after getting into a verbal altercation with a passenger following a flight from Pittsburgh to New York last week.

The story of Slater’s exit from the plane and the Jet Blue payroll has been rehashed over and over again, but it’s the aftermath that makes the story so interesting.

Since the incident Slater has become a star. He has a fan page on Facebook with nearly 200,000 fans and he is reportedly in negotiations for his own television show. The reported premise is that Slater will help people find unique ways to quit their jobs.

So what is it that has made Slater a star and what does the prevalent attitude surrounding the incident say about our society as a whole and for small businesses in general?

Slater, it seems, has struck a chord because Americans are tired of feeling like they have no control over their lives and, especially, their jobs. The problem economy that has plagued the United States for the last few years has played a big role in creating a populace that is nervous and unsure about the future.

When you couple that uncertainty with the fact that many employees have had to take on extra roles in their organization thanks to cutbacks, which leads to higher stress levels, less personal time and diminishing rewards, you have a recipe for disaster. The struggling economy has seemingly created a generation of American workers that are angry, and take out that anger on their employers through their customers.

Slater might have been upset with a woman who put too many bags in the overhead bin, but if that particular incident ever actually happened seems to be open for debate. Slater might have just had a bad day and made up the incident or they may have been another straw that broke his back.

No matter what the reason, his tirade could’ve hurt only his employer and himself. The anonymous woman he had the altercation with may or may not exist, but if anyone had been hurt, both Slater and Jet Blue would have been liable, with Jet Blue holding most of the liability.

Tension in the workplace is high these days and employees are not always equipped to deal with that tension productively. It’s actually something of a surprise that more Steven Slater type incidents don’t happen, considering the level of stress that most employees have to deal with and the lack of interest many businesses have shown in dealing with that stress and creating a tension-free environment in the workplace.

How do you ensure that your employees don’t flip out on your customers? What steps do you take to keep your organization as tension-free as possible?

Some temp jobs are better than others.

Good news! More U.S. companies are hiring.

Bad news: Many of these positions companies are hiring for are temporary.

While this isn’t uncommon for an economy in the early stages of recovery, it is frustrating not only to those looking for work, but also companies.

According to an article in this week’s Bloomberg BusinessWeek, iring of temp workers had been rising each month since October 2009, until they dipped in July by 5,600, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. From October to January, employees at staffing agencies like Manpower and Robert Half

Given the depth of the recession and concerns about a double-dip, companies are seeking more proof of customer demand before doing much permanent hiring. In a robust economy, the acceleration in orders at GE Transportation could have led to hiring full-time workers, says Stephan Koller, the company’s spokesman. Proof of sustained demand hasn’t yet appeared.

But like most things are moving in this recession, it will most likely be a long ways away until lower unemployment stats. The jobless rate won’t budge from 9.6 percent this year, according to a Bloomberg survey of economists. While growth in gross domestic product of about 3 percent is widely expected for 2010, Oppenheimer Funds corporate economist Brian Levitt says it would take at least 4 percent to make a dent in the unemployment rate.

Read more from the full article here.

There may be some truth to Michael Scott's mug. Keyword: some.

If you’re a television watching American, you’ve heard of The Office, an American spin-off of the British sitcom starring Steve Carrell. The show portrays Carrell as a poor manager… but is he?

In the British original, the boss, David Brent, played by Ricky Gervais, is an egomaniacal moron, unable to look past his own needs. In the American spinoff, Steve Carell’s Michael Scott began the same way, but over the show’s seven seasons, he has become something different.

He looks at his business as more than just the bottom line. He shows he cares about his employees and he believes in himself and the team he has assembled, for better or worse. He has become, in some ways, an effective manager who gets the most out of his team.

For example, he is constantly involved in his team’s lives. From taking an active role in Jim and Pam’s relationship to trying to find love for his employees in the last Valentine’s Day episode, the employees at Dunder Mifflin Scranton know he cares.

According to recent studies, one of the biggest problems employees encounter in the workplace is management that doesn’t care. Nobody wants to feel like they are easily replaceable or underappreciated. This is something Scott makes sure to not do.

Of course, on the show Scott does some ridiculous things, but his management style makes a relevant point for small businesses to take note of.

The personal touch that Scott exhibits on The Office is one that could be used to help businesses of all kinds, so long as it’s balanced with a strong team and business structure.

While nobody believes Scott is the role model to emulate when it comes to business management, following a few of the “strategies” that he uses certainly make sense for company’s looking for an edge. Do any Office fans- or non-fans- agree?